First Date: Meet the Writers

Booking is not required for this event, feel free to just turn up. All other events at First Date Festival require booking.

As if panels on romance as an endlessly expansive, multifaceted genre and its radical potential weren't enough, we have another treat in store for you.Start your day at First Date festival by meeting some of our local authors of romance fiction! Edinburgh is blooming with talent. Between 11 and 12 three fantastic local writers will be there to sign your books and answer your questions.

They are:

Ry Herman has worked a variety of jobs, including submissions editor, theatrical technician, and one position which could best be described as typing the number 5 all day long. They are bisexual and genderqueer, and their hobbies include baking bread, playing tabletop roleplaying games, and reading as many books as humanly possible. Ry’s queer vampire romance duology, Love Bites and Bleeding Hearts, is published by the Jo Fletcher Books imprint of Quercus. SFX calls them “the sweet, emotionally literate, non-sparkly love story you’ve been looking for”. Ry is also the author of many stage plays and musicals, which include The Monster and Voices in My Head, both published by Samuel French, and Man On Dog, published by United Stages. Although born in the US, Ry is now a permanent resident of Scotland.

Niamh Hargan was born and raised in Northern Ireland, and is now based in Edinburgh. An entertainment lawyer and writer, her first novel, Twelve Days in May was published by HarperFiction in 2022. Her second novel, The Break-Up Clause, was published by HarperFiction in June 2023.

Sam Canning is a Northern Irish writer based in Edinburgh. Virtual Strangers is her debut novel. In her spare time, she can be found roaming the city to find the weirdest things she can and desperately trying to keep her one and only plant Stanley alive.

Helen Palmer is a writer from Blackpool. She is the author of Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). She is a 2023 Interdisciplinary Resident at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA. She currently lives in Vienna. Pleasure Beach is her first novel.

Nina Kaye is a contemporary romance author who writes warm, witty and uplifting reads with a deeper edge. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband and much adored side-kick, James. In addition to writing, Nina enjoys swimming, gin and karaoke (preferably all enjoyed together in a sunny, seaside destination). Nina has published Just Like That, One Night in Edinburgh, Take A Moment and The Gin Lover’s Guide to Dating and has also been a contender for the RNA Joan Hessayson Award.